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> Really this whole article is "we are going to keep using google cloud despite their storage options being unfit for our purpose and here's how". And that's c
by jart 4y ago
> Really this whole article is "we are going to keep using google cloud despite their storage options being unfit for our purpose and here's how".
And that's called hacking. Welcome to Hacker News. Discord's engineers are gods among mortals for squeezing this kind of latency and reliability out of something Google intended for consumers. Yes I know the way you're supposed to do something like this is to use something like Cloud BigTable where you probably have to call a salesperson and pay $20,000 before you're even allowed to try the thing. But Discord just ignored the enterprisey solution and took what they needed from the consumer tools instead. It reminds me of how early Google used to build data centers out of cheap personal computers.
- stym06 4y agogoogle might see this and add it as an offering with cost lower than bigtable
- prvit 4y agoGods among mortals, because … they set up RAID?
- srer 4y agoConsider it is not an unheard of experience to join the workforce, use a preconfigured macbook with precisely 1 SSD, and spend one's career building on SaaS platforms like AWS Lambda. In such a world, perhaps those who remember there's a world of flexibility and power within the OS could be seen as welding some supernatural power.
- mwcampbell 4y agoMore charitably, the GP could be suggesting that Discord should have gone to a lower layer in the stack by using their own hardware, which would let them choose a more appropriate storage substrate instead of layering on top of an inappropriate one.